Local leaders tour SBX route

Omnitrans previewed the Inland Empire’s first SBX rapid transit service bus on Wednesday, at the Kendall Station in San Bernardino. The 15.7-mile corridor will include 16 art-inspired stations at key university, government, business, entertainment and medical centers as well as four park-and-ride facilities.
John Valenzuela — Staff Photographer

SAN BERNARDINO >> The state-of-the-art, 60-foot-long bus didn’t turn many heads as it pulled smoothly from the sbX park-and-ride station at Palm Avenue and Kendall Drive to Cal State San Bernardino on Wednesday, but for officials onboard, the 2.5-mile ride represented a coming surge into the future.

Wednesday’s voyage — a ride-along for local leaders and reporters, between the two most northern stops — was ceremonial, but beginning April 30 buses like that one will travel the 15.7-mile corridor every 10 minutes during peak hours, changing not only San Bernardino but the region, said Omnitrans chair Alan Wapner.

“We need it to succeed so we can continue to develop Bus Rapid Transit,” said Wapner, who is also an Ontario councilman. “Hopefully what we’ll see is a new type of rider. We’ll see students and business people.”

Officials hope that Wi-Fi accessibility, power outlets and a design that’s intended to appear sleeker and more like light rail than a traditional bus will appeal to riders.

In fact, it might also be a precursor to light rail, Wapner said.

And by connecting to the larger Metrolink system — including its extension into Redlands that’s planned for 2018-19 — the buses offer people an option to travel Southern California without depending on the cars that clog local freeways, said San Bernardino Mayor Pat Morris, who’s on the Omnitrans board of directors.

“We are becoming an increasingly urban region ... and that is not a healthy dependency, as we see from all of our freeways,” Morris said.

Besides propelling business within San Bernardino, Morris said the accessibility of nearby mass transit will also spur transit-oriented development in the area of sbX stops — one per mile, creating a 92-minute ride from one side of the bus line to the other.

As an example, businesses will require less parking and can be closer to the street, he said.

“It will be a far more interesting new urbanism design,” he said.

With luck, no new parking spots will be added to the 8,500 now at Cal State during his time there, said Bob Gardner, the school’s vice president of administration and finance. Students, faculty and staff at Cal State and other schools can ride sbX free, as they now do with regular Omnitrans buses.

Those regular buses take 62 minutes to go the route that sbX can complete in 46 minutes because of a 6-mile dedicated traffic lane, less frequent stops, and prioritization of traffic signals, according to interim CEO/General Manager Scott Graham.

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One of those buses arrived at Cal State Wednesday as Gardner spoke, about 11:30 a.m., and four students stepped out. Gardner said he expects ridership to increase dramatically.

Many business owners, residents and city officials have expressed skepticism about whether sbX will get enough passengers to justify the cost — $192 million, with most of that being federal dollars and the city’s only direct cost being in-kind contributions like waived fees — and disruption caused by construction and the additional lane.